Welcome to Mellow's Log Cabin. This blog's purpose is to supply information on a diversity of American southern music - ranging from country, blues, old-time and folk to R&B, rock'n'roll and rockabilly. I regularly present my research results about artists, labels, shows and also give guest writers a chance to publish their texts here on occasion.

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Monday, April 21, 2014

Sonny Williams on CTJ, Part 2

Another interesting offering by Sonny Williams on the Cotton Town Jubilee label. Both "Too Much Competition" as well as its flip side "Play Me a Country Song" were written by songwriter Melvin Endsley, most famous for penning "Singing the Blues." I ommited in my last post that Williams recorded well before his Cotton Town Jubilee sides.

He started in 1959 on the Coin label from Chicago. Coin was operated by Frank McNulty, who also wrote some songs recorded by Williams. His first release for the label was "Lucky Linda" b/w "Bye Bye Baby, Goodbye" (Coin 45-1502, 1959), the latter being a cover of Col Joyce's hit in Australia. Williams followed up with "Broken Heart" / "Just You" (Coin 45-1503, 1959). "Hippopotamus Steak" / "Broken Heart (Coin 45-1506) was released under his real name but was released in 1963, according to the RCA matrix code found on the label. At that time, he was already recording for Cotton Town Jubilee. A last disc on Coin was released with "All Because of Love" b/w "Nobody Else" (Coin 45-1515).Composer Melvin Endsley (1934-2004) hailed from Drasco, Arkansas, near Heber Springs. He suffered from polio as a child and was chained to a wheel chair all his life. While being at a Crippled Children's Hospital in Memphis, he learned to play guitar and after his return to Drasco, began performing on local radio. In 1954, he wrote "Singing the Blues" and held a first demo session in 1955 at the Hickory Studio, Nashville. Marty Robbins and Guy Mitchell had a big hit with "Singing the Blues" in 1956. In December of that year, he began recording for RCA-Victor, switched to MGM in 1959 and then to Hickory in 1960. He held one unissued session in 1960 for Eddie Bond's Stomper Time label and returned to Memphis for another session in 1965, this time for the Millionair label (likely also an Eddie Bond venture). From 1967 onwards, he recorded for his own Mel-Ark label. Listen to one of Endsley's RCA-Victor singles on Some Local Loser.